Spring has barely sprung in my corner of the midwest, but the rabbits are already digging holes in our yard, preparing (I suspect) to expand their brood. Funny thing about gardening… Rabbits ain’t so cute anymore. Nor are squirrels or cats or mice (or rats… this is urban gardening, after all…).

So T & I dug the nesting material out if one particularly deep hole & I put him to work flooding & filling it. This may sound cruel but if we don’t nip it in the bud, we’ll come out to play in the backyard one afternoon & encounter a very scared mama rabbit who has just had a bunch of babies & then in an hour there will just be a hole full of dead baby rabbits (yes, that’s what happened past year). I’d wager that for the preschool set flooding & filling empty holes is much more fun than burying baby rabbits!

My garden is not in such great shape that it needs protecting, but I’m trying. We came out of a cold snap, which has stunted even my kale & chard (the supposedly hearty greens!) not to mention my motivation. There aren’t enough hours in the day, especially when you factor in the random (& somewhat terrifying) midnight wakings of a four-yoear-old.

We’ve got a big expansion underway & I just need to finish it so the rest of the seeds & seedling can get in the ground. It’s time! … Actually, it’s past time, but if I work hard this weekend, we’ll be canning tomato sauce in a few months!